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7 Effective Business Tools For Managing Your Startup Business

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Written By Kazim Raza

Small businesses often struggle with being able to manage all the work by themselves.

They tend to make mistakes based on inexperience, and work overload.

Mistakes that happen due to lack of experience is something most clients might forgive.

However, the mistakes that happen due to an oversight or due to lack of research will not be easily forgotten by a client.

Here are a couple of apps that have been made to make your business and life easier and smoother.

Choosing the right business tools at the right time can prove to be absolutely crucial to your startup business.

With the millions of apps that are available, here’s a list of the top seven business tools that you should consider for managing your startup business.

7 Effective Business Tools For Managing Your Startup Business

7 Effective Business Tools For  Managing Your Startup Business

1. Shopify

Shopify is an e-commerce platform for small businesses and entrepreneurs who can use this platform to introduce and sell their product into the market.

Shopify was founded by two Canadian based entrepreneurs who were frustrated with the lack of e-commerce platforms available to sell the great set of products they had.

Like, true entrepreneurs, they came up with Shopify as a solution to their problems.

This platform was then opened to other retailers who wished for a platform to sell their products to a wider population.

Shopify also makes life easier by providing channels to other e-commerce stores such as Amazon and eBay through Shopify.

Shopify is preferred by most entrepreneurs as they have very flexible operations and a great number of features that would cater to all your business needs.

2. Basecamp

Started a business, but way too many things to handle. Well, Basecamp is your one-stop-for-all solution.

Basecamp is an American based application. They started off as a web design company and later on moved into a web application.

Basecamp is a project management tool for startups and large businesses.

A project management tool helps you in all your management needs starting from planning, delegation, executing, controlling and gathering feedback.

Basecamp helps you go through all these functions with ease similar to cutting into butter.

This application helps brings together all the planning, scheduling, chats and messages together with all your employees and partners.

All the conversations, plans, charts and messages in one place. You get to know what’s happening, where it’s happening and whos handling it all in one place.

This is a must-have business tool for all start-ups as, this will help put things into perspective, define roles and functions.

The best part about this application is that they charge by the month and not by the number of users unlike many other project management tools in the market.

3. Things

What a simple name for an application that does so much.

This app is a holy grail for all productivity nerds. Things were first introduced to the apple app store in 2008 along with the original iPhones in most countries. Things was loved and accepted by all then.

As the iPhones got updated, unfortunately, Things didn’t. Until they introduced Things 3 in 2017. The team at Things worked super hard for about 2 years before they introduced this game changer into the market.

Any app that can combine Calendars, Reminders and To-Do list together is a dream come true. Things come extremely close to this.

My personal favorite is the circle of status next to every project. If you have completed 3 parts of your to-do list, the circle will show some space left to complete your circle.

This also works as a motivation factor to me, I feel restless seeing that little portion incomplete.

Another crowd favorite is the “magic plus button” (as the developers call it). It appears as a blue circle and you can move it around. Moving its position also changes its options.

For example, when placed on the bottom left corner- it gives you the option to move your list to the inbox.

Apart from all these features, Things is a wonderful app, because of its simplicity in design and ease of use.

4. LastPass

Just like its name, this app gives you the ultimate pass and freedom to enjoy without the hassles of remembering your password or losing your saved passwords because you forgot to backup encrypted data.

LastPass is an application that helps you store all your passwords in one place.

It updates new passwords with just a single click and creates new passwords with ease.

Keep your passwords as complicated as ever, LastPass will keep them safe.

All you have to do is remember one password. The password that would be open your vault of passwords.

What is the catch? Well, forget this password, nobody can help you.

LastPass service center cannot see you your password, they cannot access your account, they cannot change your password or even send you a link to change your password.

Once you forget your password, it’s locked forever, or until you remember your password.

However, this is useful to small start-ups as you need to access different types of websites and different bank accounts.

This account can help you find all these in one place. Another amazing feature is that this app lets you share passwords, without letting the other party see your password. It’s encrypted!

5. Slack

This is an American based application which is essentially a collaboration tool, that also has a full form- “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge”.

Sounds pretty cool right? So what does it do?-

Slack helps users organize topics by importance, or simply highlight the important conversations or topics.

Clear confusions on the spot. No more waiting for an email. This application can be used from anywhere using your mobile, desktops, laptops, etc.

It also connects and uses channels like Dropbox and Evernote to help smooth out all the operations and creates ease of management.

When it comes to team communications, you need to move on from email and text messaging.

You get an important email; the mail gets lost in between your overflowing inbox. The text isn’t searchable so you can’t find that important message from two months ago.

Download Slack. You can organize your business around topics, share files, and keep a searchable history of all the conversations across your company.

Millions of people use Slack to simplify their communications including employees at Airbnb, Harvard, and Ticketmaster.

6. Toggle

Being a small business and a startup, you need to manage your time and projects better. This app will help you find out, the areas

  • where you spend time,
  • how you spend time and
  • doing what do you spend time.

The toggle is the perfect time tracking app for new entrepreneurs. Every new business setup must have this app before starting your business.

Time tracker helps you track your time and gives you alerts and reminders based on three things or one word- Your workload.

The number of projects to be completed and the different tasks on your calendar and your to-do list.

Toggle breaks these tasks down and measures them using currency and shows you or reminders you worth and the tasks worth. It helps you get your priorities right.

It’s got an idle detector that reminds you to get off that snap chat and get moving with actual work.

No matter what device you are working on, Toggle connects all your devices and gives you the much-needed reminders to either get off work or get on with that project.

Another benefit- it works even without an internet connection. You simply have to sync it when you get a data connection.

7. Evernote

Evernote helps in storing and organizing your documents and notes. It helps you sync them to your different devices so that they are accessible from anywhere at any time.

Never lose a document again or never lose a contract because you didn’t have the right documents at hand.

Evernote stores all data in document form. It can be used to store any files or images as long as it is in google docs or ms.word or pdf format.

You don’t have to fret about losing your files, as Evernote has an amazing backup and storage capacity. Your files are going nowhere until you take them off there.

You can use Evernote to share documents and processes across your business. However, you can even use it for storing your own personal notes, lists, and write-ups.

I use it to store receipts, articles, business ideas, quotes, and everything else that I never want to forget.

These business tools can be your ticket to success or failure. If you spend too much time on them, you are losing precious time to run and manage your company.

It’s all about finding the right balance. Find yours and watch yourself and your business rise like a phoenix.

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